Speaking on the Senate floor Monday evening, Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley came up with a new one: this whole nominating judges thing is just an attempt by the Democratic Party to distract from the difficulties the administration has been having in implementing the Affordable Care Act.

“Rather than focus on this crisis–a real crisis–the other side has developed a strategy specifically designed to divert attention from it,” Grassley declared. “That strategy is to use the D.C. Circuit as a smokescreen.”

President Obama nominated Millett, Pillard and Wilkins in June, months before the difficulties with the Affordable Care Act implementation were known. Republicans had been giving notice of their intent to filibuster every single one of Obama’s nominees to the DC Circuit as far back as August. The problems with the Affordable Care Act exchanges didn’t begin until they opened on October 1.

Obama certainly didn’t need a crystal ball in June to know that Republicans would try to block his nominees. But it’s ludicrous for Grassley to claim, as he did in April, that Obama was engaged in a nefarious “court-packing” scheme–and then say now that the president was nominating judges in an attempt to distract from a political problem that hadn’t happened yet.

Republicans have made it clear that they won’t let a single one of Obama’s nominees through. Democrats have two choices: they can either alter the Senate rules to make it more difficult to filibuster judicial nominees, or they can allow Republicans to continue nullifying the results of the 2008 and 2012 elections by preventing Obama from making appointments to the bench.